Eli Whitney Invents the Cotton Gin

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Eli Whitney Invents the Cotton Gin
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• Eli Whitney, a young man from Massachusetts,
  listened politely to the Georgia planters
  complaints. Tobacco prices were low, and rice and
  indigo prices werent much better.

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• Cotton grew well, but cleaning the seeds out of
  cotton fibers was a big problem.

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• A slave picking out seeds by hand could clean
  only a few pounds a day. At that rate, even using
  cheap slave labor, there was no profit in raising
  cotton.

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• Unless something changed, the future of farming
  in the South looked bleak.

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• As the planter talked, a solution to their
  problem began to take shape in Whitney's head.

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• Within months he had created the cotton gin, an
  invention that allowed raw cotton to pass through
  narrow slits in a piece of wood, pulling the
  cotton fibers through but leaving the seeds
  behind.

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• A small gin could be hand-cranked larger
  versions could be harnessed to a horse or driven
  by water power.

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• "One man and a horse will do more than fifty men
  with the old machines," wrote Whitney to his
  father. . . . "Tis generally said by those who
  know anything about it, that I shall make a
  fortune by it."

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American Cotton Production

• Thanks to his invention, cotton production in the
  U.S. skyrocketed from 1.5 million pounds in 1790
  to 85 million pounds in 1810.

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• But in the end, Whitney made virtually nothing
  from his invention. Others copied his invention
  and he was left virtually penniless.

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Cotton Gin
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Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts
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• In 1804, Whitney left the South forever,
  disappointed and disgusted. In his words, "An
  invention can be so valuable as to be worthless
  to the inventor."

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• But after settling in New Haven, Connecticut,
  Whitney settled on an idea that would be as
  valuable to the North as his cotton gin was to
  the South.

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• In 1798, the federal government awarded Eli
  Whitney a contract of 134,000 to produce and
  deliver 10,000 muskets.

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• Until then, every rifle had been made by hand
  from stock to barrel but the parts of one gun
  did not fit any other gun, nor did anyone expect
  them to.

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• It was Whitney's idea to use machines that would
  make all the parts of his rifles so nearly
  identical that the machines parts could be
  interchangeable from one gun to another.

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• This system of manufacturing would permit an
  unskilled man to turn out a product that would be
  just as good as one made by a highly trained
  machinist.

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• Whitneys idea caught on all over America.
• By 1850, English visitors back from America
  described what they now called the American
  System of Manufacture.